Summoner Survey Says: Honor Points System

If you play League of Legends then it goes without saying that you have come across at least one individual that deserves to be banned from the game. There is a report function for a reason, but does that mean you should always use it?Start off by visiting the poll I made on the League of Legends forums to cast your vote!I’ll make it very clear; I do NOT ever use the report feature. Not that I never have a reason to, but mainly I have decided that it’s not worth my time to even bother. Instead I use the ignore feature. But why? It doesn’t even work. I know this because I use it excessively and have come across situations where I’ve ignored a player on my team one game and then queued up for another. To no surprise, the same person ends up on my team again. They start talking in game and I can hear them. Even though when I press tab, it is clearly marked that this person has been ignored.
So even the ignore feature is broken, but this isn’t about the peace of mind you should get by ignoring people. This is about the reporting feature being just as big of a broken crutch that serves no real function but to waste my time.You could claim that the report function works because of the Tribunal, but you would just be buying into Riot’s propaganda that attempts to make the players feel empowered.The truth is that Riot’s system fails because of the player, that does both the reporting and the judging. I understand that it requires a final review by Riot before any action is taken, but you must also take into consideration that these reports are mostly submitted by players who abuse the report feature. Let me explain why.

Take a typical normal game where there isn’t any leavers or AFKers. Your team may not be doing the best ever, but you are holding on. Suddenly one or two of your teammates get into an argument over having made a bad choice. Things start to degrade from there and the next thing you know they are arguing in all chat about how everybody should report the other. This kind of behavior only perpetuates the problems your team must overcome to win the match. It only serves as an unnecessary distraction from recovering from mistakes and making a comeback. I can’t recall how many matches I could have won if my team had just manned up and moved on to try harder. It’s more than possible to pull off a win by making a comeback. I know this because of the teams I have had that didn’t fall apart at the first sign of trouble and turned the match around through hard work in conjunction with determination.So as you can see, I feel a majority of reporting that goes on is unnecessary and only serves as spam that floods the system. This leads to real cases of reports on serious issues being lost in the pointless bickering.

Let’s take another example of reporting where a player leaves the game or goes AFK. Not when a player states they are giving up, but when it happens without warning. I feel that players who use reporting in these situations have absolutely no understanding or patience. In the end it is just a game and with that said I can understand if a player has to leave the computer for something important. It’s also possible that a disconnected player is having technical difficulties which prevent them from entering the game. Such situations range from client crashes to internet or electricity outages. There is simply no way to tell if sometimes if a player is truly having issues or if they just started them game knowing they couldn’t finish it or had to go AFK constantly throughout. I have personally had technical difficulties with my client constantly crashing and when I finally got it fixed and re-entered the game I was instantly bombarded by my team crying that I deserved to be reported and banned. Even after I explained my situation as soon as I entered the match.

In conclusion I feel that there are very few and specific circumstances where reporting a player is merited. I also feel that players should be more understanding when evaluating their use of the reporting feature. It also scares me that these same players who find any and every reason to report someone are also participating in the Tribunal. The only thing that brings me comfort is the fact that despite how many players have claimed to report me, especially for selfish reasons, I have not been banned or even been given a warning. Maybe then after all the system does work in some weird way? What do you think?